never mind a world with its villains or heroes
by recycled-stars
Summary: Every new addition to a family requires some negotiation. Beckett's father's cabin proves instrumental in that process.  Castle/Beckett but exploring Alexis and Beckett's relationship.
1. Chapter 1

Notes before we start: Pre-ep for _Cops And Robbers_ so **contains spoilers**. Title from "dive for dreams" by e. e. cummings which just seemed to fit the feel. Side note: the formatting _did not translate_ from LJ to this website. I did my best, but apologies for any stuff ups.

* * *

><p>When the bank explodes, she would swear that every single cell in her body halts its microscopic movements and everything, <em>everything<em>, stops.

.

She's inside the building behind the other cops before she knows what's happening. It's quiet and then suddenly loud. The others swarm through to the back of the building, searching for the bank robbers but she lingers. The paramedics begin triaging around her and she follows them from patient to patient in turn, eyes searching, feet kicking up glass. (God, there's _so _much glass.)

When she's run out of places to look she follows the hostage rescue team into the back and there he is, sitting on a chair that swivels, like the one at her desk, rocking from side to side.

Castle senses her or else it's just that every moment today has felt like fate, but he looks up and meets her eyes and she nearly cries from the relief. He's _fine, alive, breathing_. Her heels stall but her mouth betrays her, twisting into a smile. She lifts her hand and curls her fingers into a wave.

(She beats herself up in her head. Why is she always about half gestures with him?)

He blinks at her. "Either this gash that's going to ruin my handsome features is bigger than I thought or you actually look happy to see me."

The air rushes out of her, but it's mirth not shock, not grief.

He quirks his head, confused. "Laughing at my jokes. I'm leaning towards Dream Beckett."

She smirks. "Is that really all I do in your dreams Castle?"

Her partner's mouth falls open. "You sure I'm the only one with a head injury?"

She moves to stand in front of him, reaching down to take the handkerchief he's using to mop at his bleeding forehead and presses her own hand against the wound. "I don't know about ruining your good looks." She smiles down at him. "It'll add character."

Beckett's hand fists around the shoulder of his jacket; it anchors her in the moment until he speaks, quietly. "Did you see my mother out there?"

She searches her memories. "She was in the back, I think, behind the counter. I ... I don't know any more, I'm sorry. I can go check." She moves to pull back but his hand curls around her wrist.

"In a minute." He lets the chair edge closer to her feet and leans closer until his forehead glances her jacket. Her other hand hovers beside his ear and he hears her breathe, her stomach moving by his head. Finally, she stops hesitating. Her fingers slip against his hair, hugging him against her.

She closes her eyes. "For a minute I thought-"

"I know," he mumbles.

"I know you do." Her chest aches as she says it, a faint echo beneath where her rib cage healed over.

The spell shatters then. She hears the tell-tale sounds of a suspect resisting arrest and steps backwards.

"Martha," she says, a half-sentence but he nods, understanding.

She feels the absence of warmth against her stomach and presses her hand to where he's not as she returns to the chaos.

* * *

><p>Later, when Martha has assured them all she's fine and shooed them from the hospital room and when Beckett has gone back to the precinct to help the lead investigator go over the paperwork (it's the least she can do), she finds her apartment is suddenly too quiet, too big, too full of something she can't stand anymore.<p>

He answers after she raps on the door twice.

"Hey." She leans her weight against the door frame and twists her hands around the bottle of wine she grabbed as an excuse on her way out the door.

"Hey." He looks surprised. That weighs on her. He's made a habit of dropping by for her and until today she's never thought to return the favour. And this is as much for her as it is for him.

"Sorry," she says. "I should have called. After today you probably want to be with Alexis."

Castle shakes his head and points above them. "She's been on the phone to Ashley for two hours. And from what I've overheard, it's not going well."

"Oh." She doesn't quite know what to say.

He starts, suddenly remembering they're still lingering in the doorway and gestures to the open living area of the loft. "Come in."

She does.

And then they hover on the other side of the closed door, still waiting for something. Godot, she thinks, and reaches for his sleeve. She steps closer, crowding at his chest and his hands pause above her shoulders until she looks up, the smallest hint of a smile the only invitation. He lets his hands fall and curl, thumbs tracing her clavicles through her shirt. The touch conducts through her like electricity. It's not as much as she wants, but it's all she'll allow herself, for now. She bows her head to keep from kissing him and feels the weight of his chin settle against the crown.

_Don't die_, she thinks furiously, _don't leave me, not yet, don't, don't, don't_. It's in rhythm with the pulsing headache building behind her temples but she doesn't let it roll off her tongue. It's too likely to be proceeded by another confession, and she doesn't want _that _to be because she's afraid, doesn't want it to be at the end of the longest day she's had in years because he nearly died. There's another, better beginning for them.

His chin bumps into her skull as he speaks. "How'd it go at the precinct?"

Beckett sighs and steps backward, disentangling her hands. His arms stretch out between them. "The guy we caught lawyered up. We're talking to the prosecutor about some kind of deal if he gives up the others, but even with names, I'm not sure how easy it will be to track them down. And of course, the feds will have to be involved. Thankfully that's not our problem; it's back to homicides and the wrath of Gates tomorrow."

"I never thought I'd say this, but thank God." He grins. "So, since you're here, and I'm always a good host, I should offer to drink that wine you brought, even though I'm sure I was advised to avoid alcohol in case of concussion."

"Really?" She holds the bottle away from him when he reaches for it and looks serious.

She suddenly realises he's teasing her. "Kate, they're just covering all bases. I'm _fine_."

Beckett presses her lips together in the way she always does when she's amused but trying not to show it. It reaches her eyes though; happiness, he sees it spread along her brow, smoothing the creases in her forehead. "Okay, but on one condition," she says, handing him the bottle. He makes a show of inspecting the label and she frowns, but it's just a dance they know the steps to now. He'd never actually insult her taste, and besides, he'd drink water from the East River if Kate Beckett brought it to his door.

He looks up. "What's your condition?"

She reaches out and presses her hand to the dressing on his forehead. "Sit down, let me get the glasses. You've suffered more damage than I have."

"Maybe," he muses, tone serious. He's thinking, too much probably, but days like today have a way of making his mind run on even more than usual.

She guesses at what he's not saying. "Physically, at least. Actually I think the person who suffered the most was Alexis."

He draws a breath and they cross to the kitchen. "Glasses are in that cupboard above the sink."

"I know." She stands on her tip toes to pull down two, the heels that complete her work attire are at home in her hallway where she kicked them off earlier. Normally she'd suffer through the pain in her arches even this late at night, but today every muscle in her body is exhausted.

"Do you think she'll be okay?" he asks. "Alexis. I mean, she seemed fine earlier, but I know she's feeling more than she lets on."

"Her whole family, her whole life was in that bank Castle. And when it exploded I," she halts, words failing her, glasses clinking together where they're threaded between her fingers. "Well I'm guessing I only know a fraction of what she felt, but trust me, it wasn't easy. And just because you're both safe doesn't mean all's well that ends well."

"You never forget the memory of that fear." He nods, understanding, far too well probably.

.

When they've made it to the couch and through half the bottle, easy in each other's company, there's a lull in the conversation. She's been sitting too close to him all night; knees brushing and only a hairsbreadth of cushion between their thighs. She lets her palm fall against his knee and leans her head against his shoulder. "I might regret saying this, but I've never been more happy to see you as I was this afternoon."

He shifts, eyes curious and staring down at her. "Why would you regret saying that?"

He's still warm and solid beneath her cheek and suddenly she feels trapped. It's a good point. _Why would you regret it Kate? _But she knows that it's because she doesn't want to promise him more than she can give, and it's because that admission goes with another one and one after that until he knows all her secrets and she's not ready to trust him with them yet. It's getting far too hard to keep everything in, not when he's there, beside her, day after day, and all part of her wants is to let it all spill out.

She shrugs and pulls herself upright. "Wouldn't want it to go to your head Castle."

"Too late." He smirks and tries to hide it beneath his wine glass. "I'll remind you of it at every single one of my less endearing moments."

"I'll get sick of hearing it," she teases.

"You probably will." He sighs, turns serious. "I'm sorry you had to do that, that you had to be the one to negotiate with them. I know it must have been ... hard."

"Apart from burying my mother? Hardest thing I've done in my life."

The hand that's been resting against the back of the sofa finds her shoulder. He curls his fingers against her bicep. "Thank you."

She snorts. "Why are you thanking me? My efforts nearly got you and your mother blown up."

He shrugs. "Minor detail."

"It's not though." Beckett looks at him honestly, in a way she doesn't very often. She's not about to cry though he can see the hint of tears; she's in control of her emotions, which is what makes it all the more significant when she reaches up and stills his hand against her shoulder, not quite squeezing his fingers but trapping them there and says, "I never would have forgiven myself."

"Luckily you don't have to."

She nods. "But I can't stop thinking-"

"- what if." He finishes her sentence like he sometimes does when they're on the verge of cracking a case.

"Yeah." She shuffles away from him, reaches out and smudges her fingerprints against his glassware, below the crescent shaped marks left by her lips. She's suddenly done with it. The alcohol is making her feel heavier with her emotions than she should. She turns the last mouthful over on her tongue and swallows, slumping back against the cushions. (His hand somehow finds the back of her neck, and she'd protest but he rubs against a knot she can never quite get out and it feels criminally good.)

"It gets easier," he tells her.

She opens her eyes, shocked out of relaxing, and stares. "How?"

(It's quiet and thin and she barely believes it's her own voice.)

It's more an afterthought than a question but he answers her anyway. "You stop letting yourself going in circles, and make yourself go forward."

She shouldn't understand it because it's odd, and on the surface, out of place in context, but she hears what he is saying and what he isn't. "I'm trying."

"I know. It's not easy."

"Then what's your secret?" she asks, a note of wry humour in the inflection.

Castle blanches for the briefest second, and if they were playing poker, she'd have noticed, but they're not and she's too focussed on the movements of his eyes and his mouth, too in the moment, to see it. He recovers. "I wish I could tell you. I think that quite by accident you managed what forty years couldn't; you made me grow up."

She shakes her head. "Don't credit me. That was all you."

"Maybe." He agrees to disagree. It _was_ her. She was the first person since Alexis that made him want to be _better_.

"Doesn't help me much though," she continues, staring at her hands. "Saying that I just have to wait for an epiphany."

"Maybe you do." He shrugs next to her; she can feel the cushions move. "Maybe you don't. It doesn't matter."

"What?"

"To me, it doesn't matter. I'll be here as long as you want me to be, probably longer." He grins at the thought of making a nuisance of himself, but when she responds she looks grave.

"I hope you mean that," she tells him. "Really."

"Hey, I'm your partner remember? You need to walk in circles for a while, I'll walk with you."

"What if-" she sucks in a breath, gathers her insides and her thoughts and forces it out. "What if we just went forward, but slowly?"

His lips curve and it's a gentle joy. "Isn't that what we've been doing?"

She feels everything in her relax when he says it, because yes, it is, but she didn't want to give herself permission to believe it in case she had misunderstood him, them. She nods, once, and presses her hand to her mouth to hide the answering smile. Against all odds, the moment is perfect.

Her life has been turned inside and out in the last year, but Kate Beckett is learning things in the wake of it. She knows they've barely said anything, that it's delicate, that it could break, but she's beginning to understand that everything is fragile and that there's a beauty in it. She can stand back from it and appreciate that now without fear. One day, not too far from now, it might fall apart, but she'll still have the pieces. They'll find reasons to be angry at each other, or he'll die, or she will, but not today. That's enough.

They're quiet. Both are thinking of _I love you _but neither says it. Maybe they both hear it anyway.

Alexis' footsteps on the stairs interrupt the silence. Beckett blinks a few times and studies Castle's face as he turns towards his daughter. She sees the change in his expression and follows his gaze. The teenager is crying, clutching the phone to her chest absently like she doesn't know what else to do with it, and she sniffs loudly before she speaks.

"Daddy."

Castle is at a loss for a moment, so Beckett makes the leap of logic first. She stands and nudges at his foot until he does the same. She clears their glasses. "I'll let myself out."

"No," he protests immediately. "Stay."

She balances the two glasses in one hand easily and curls her other around his elbow. "I think you're needed more elsewhere. I'll see you in the morning."

He wants to kiss her half-open mouth in the middle of the sentence but settles instead for bending to kiss her cheek. She's surprised. He hears her inhale sharply and studies her as he pulls back. Her tongue is pressed to the inside of her cheek. He smiles, brief and transient, and turns back to Alexis.

"What happened?" he asks.

His daughter folds into his open arms and sobs in a way that can only mean heartbreak. His own aches for her, and a little bit for himself as he watches Beckett make her exit over the top of Alexis' head.

As she rinses the glasses and loads them into the dishwasher, listening to Alexis' account of her break up with Ashley (interrupted by several crying jags), Beckett lets her hand wander to her cheek once more, wondering how she'll ever re-establish the carefully drawn lines, how they'll erase what happened by the morning and start tomorrow back where they started today. She swallows. They can't, and that's the point isn't it? She promised herself she wouldn't go _back _any more.

* * *

><p>Two Saturdays pass. On a Sunday, Alexis exits her violin lesson on the Upper East Side precisely on time. Beckett's waiting, leaning against her car, her keys curled into her palm. Technically they're only meant to use them for police business, but she'll get away with it once. (Even if Gates <em>is<em>a stickler for rules, Beckett knows the right people to smile at down at the garage.) She calls out to Castle's daughter, gets her attention.

"Detective Beckett." Alexis stops in the middle of the sidewalk and looks surprised. "Did my dad send you?"

"No." She shakes her head, smiling. "But let's say he did tip me off regarding your schedule. And you're wondering what I'm doing here, but you're too polite to ask."

"Not too polite. I just think before I speak, most of the time. I didn't the other day." Alexis frowns. "That wasn't very polite. I'm sorry."

"It was more than understandable. You don't have to apologise. But you could let me show you something."

Alexis taps her foot, thinking, for a brief moment then nods and moves towards the passenger seat. "Okay."

"Can you give me the rest of the day?" Beckett asks, because it can be anywhere between a three and five hour round trip to her father's cabin if the traffic is bad. "If you need to study I can just take you home."

"No," Alexis sighs. "Senior year is a joke. Where are we going?" She looks wary, but slips into Castle's seat just the same.

"Somewhere where it's quiet. I want to show you where I was all summer."

When they're in the car, Alexis slips on a pair of Prada sunglasses which Beckett immediately covets and settles back in the seat. "How far?"

"Two hours there and back."

"Why?"

The Castle curiosity is apparently genetic.

"Because," Beckett pauses, drums her fingers against the steering wheel and looks over her shoulder for a gap in the oncoming traffic. After she takes advantage of the kind of space people who don't drive in the city would flinch at, she eases off the accelerator as the traffic slows and finishes the sentence. "I'm pretty sure you're a little bit _mad _at me, because of what happened. And I'd like you to tell my side of it, if you're willing to listen."

Alexis folds her arms and stares out the window for a moment before nodding. "I can do that."

Beckett glances away from the road for a second. "Really?"

"It seems unfair to judge you harshly without hearing it." The teenager slips out of her shoes and crosses her legs beneath her. "One condition though."

"What's that?" For a moment, she's worried.

"Can I pick the radio station?"

Beckett smiles, relieved. "Sure."

The rest of the car trip is scored by piano-heavy alternative rock. (Alexis has much less grating taste than her father.) After they've exhausted the usual topics of school and extracurriculars (skirting Ashley and college applications), the silence stretches before them like the lines on the highway, but it's comfortable enough, so neither of them fills it with unnecessary words.

.

The cabin is set back from the road which turns to barely more than gravel a few miles from the turn off. Beckett pulls over to the shoulder. The ground is wet with rain and the road is too rugged for her to feel comfortable driving further in a car from the pool.

"It's just up the drive," she tells her passenger. "Do you mind walking?"

The dashboard catches a few fat drops of rain and the sky rumbles in the distance.

She thought they'd outrun the storm on the freeway - the grey sky in the rear view mirror had been a sharp contrast to the blue horizon - but it's about to catch up with them.

Alexis stretches out her legs and shakes her head. "After that drive, I could use it."

They make it most of the way up the incline before the rain starts in earnest. They run the rest of the way to the door. Beckett struggles with the keys as the rain begins to fall in sheets onto the porch. By the time they make it into the cabin, they're trailing water into the hall.

Beckett turns to the linen closet and hands Alexis a towel. "Sorry, but it's easy to get bogged up here when it rains."

"Don't worry about it." Alexis kicks of her shoes and dries her feet on the mat, wandering down the hall to the kitchen. "It's nice," she reports the results of her appraisal. "And you're right. It's quiet here."

It's true. The only sound is the loud drumming of the rain on the roof.

Beckett steps past her into the kitchen and begins shuffling through the cupboards. "Tea?"

"Sure."

They take the mugs out onto the back porch. The clouds are lying low, obscuring the view down the gentle slope to the lake. Beckett lets her hand curl around the wooden railing, catching the freezing rain dripping from the overflowing gutters. She breathes in the smell of it. It's not just the quiet, it's everything about the place. It sets something in her to rest.

When she turns back, Alexis is sitting on the porch swing wrapped in an old blanket and carefully balances her mug on her knees. She pats the space beside her.

Beckett nods, sits down and hugs the arm of the chair. It rocks slowly back and forth beneath them.

"I'm sorry if this is uncomfortable for you, or forward," she says. "I know it must seem a little left field."

"No." Alexis shakes her head and drops her mouth into her tea. "I mean yes, it's not the norm, but no, it's not ... uncomfortable. I've always liked you Detective Beckett. You've ... well, my dad really likes working with you, likes _you_, and it was nice to see him pick someone," she hesitates, trying to put it diplomatically, "More interested in being his equal, for a change. It was good for him."

"Was." Beckett sighs. It's not a question, just an observation of the use of past tense.

"Well this summer was hard on him, and ... he threw himself in front of a bullet for you and you just _left_. And as much as I can like you and respect what you do, I sometimes wonder if this is what's best for _him_." She exhales in a rush, a weight lifted from her chest and twists her toe into the wooden deck, afraid to look for a reaction. "I'm sorry. I know it's not really any of my business."

"No. It's okay. That was the point of this." Beckett gestures around them with her hand. "I get it. You don't want to see him get hurt. Of course you don't; you love him. And I know that-" she swallows, lets a finger rub into a splintering groove in the wood. "This summer was hard for everyone. I'm sure it was hard for you, and for everyone else, to see it happen. And I nearly died." She's never really phrased it like that before, not even with the therapist; it's always just been something that everybody understands but doesn't say. It's true though, and a harsh reality voiced plainly always makes her feel unburdened. "Believe me, it was hard for me too."

"I know." Alexis runs her thumb against the rim of the mug. "I'm sorry. I know you're right. You had major surgery," her eyes are lingering on the scar that's just visible above the top button of Beckett's shirt. When she notices, Beckett pulls it closed a little self-consciously. "Recovering from it must not have been easy," Alexis finishes.

She shrugs. "Most days now I don't notice it. But then... I couldn't do the simplest things for myself. And I didn't want anybody to see me like that. Apart from my dad, no one did. But I especially didn't want Castle, your dad, to ... it's not because I didn't want to see him, and it's not because I think he wouldn't have _helped_. I'm sure he would have. I just didn't want to owe him that. I couldn't let him take care of me like that and then ask him to stop later, after I had healed. I know he cares about me, and I know you see that and it worries you because you see how I keep my distance and think that I don't care about him just as much. But I do. I just had to put myself back together, I had to be able to be who I want to be for him, before anything could change. I'm just like you. I don't want him to get hurt and I don't want to hurt him. So I came out here."

"And? Did it help?"

"Partly. But you can't just stop being the person you are Alexis, especially when it comes to the parts of yourself you don't like. Evolution is slow, but people do change."

She sighs out. "I know. You saw, the other night, and I'm sure dad's told you, about what happened with Ashley."

"I guessed."

"I'm sorry if I ... interrupted."

"We were just talking. It was nothing that wouldn't keep." Beckett paused. "I'm sorry, about Ashley, and that it all happened at once."

"Yeah well," Alexis chooses her words. "It was a _crappy _day."

"The worst."

"It was the one time I really needed him, not anybody else. And I know it wasn't his fault, but... I didn't have anyone. No one was there."

"I-" Beckett starts and stops. "Alexis, I don't expect to be your best friend. And I know I was working, so I wasn't really free, but I want you to know that when it comes to your dad, your family, we're on the same side. I'd do anything to protect him; I wouldn't hesitate for a moment. That's what I was ... I was _trying _to get them out of there. You have no idea how sorry I am that I couldn't do a better job."

"It's hardly your fault. I'm sorry if it seemed like I blamed you."

"I understand. You must have felt like you were going out of your mind worrying. I was." Beckett's lips twist into a small, self-depreciating smile. "You're not the only one who loves him."

Alexis goes quiet. "Oh." She mulls over it for a moment then asks, "So _how_? I know you're going to tell me it's complicated, that relationships aren't as simple as loves me, loves me not, and I know that, rather acutely lately, but ... isn't it worth trying? After something like that happens, to remind you of how easily you could lose that chance, how can you just wake up the next day and return to the status quo?"

"Because I'm still working through some things that are in the way. I've never been very good at relationships. And I want to be, for him."

The teenager considers her words, sips at the last of her tea and rocks back against the cushions. The rain eases in front of them. "Okay."

"Okay?"

She nods. "Not that you need my permission, or my blessing, but okay. Just... know that even if it didn't work out the first time, dad's very forgiving. We all are."

Beckett breathes, realising she's been unconsciously tense then entire day now that she's relaxed. She twists her toes in her shoes and stretches her legs. "I'm glad to hear it."

"And it means a lot to me," Alexis tells her, suddenly a little shy. "That you went to the trouble of ... talking to me, about it. I mean, you didn't have to do that. I guess it makes me think that you're serious about sticking around."

"I am." Beckett looks thoughtful. "I'm sorry I didn't even think of it until the other day. Your dad didn't mention you'd expressed any concerns about him working with me until afterward, but when he did, I just... I'm sorry I was so thoughtless. I didn't think to ask you how you felt about it at all until then. I just assumed he'd discussed it with you and with Martha."

"We didn't talk much about you after the shooting," Alexis bends to set her tea down on the porch and says it quietly, like she knows the potential for damage the words wield. "He was... pretty hurt that you didn't call and I didn't like to ask. And then when you came back," she trailed off, and her thoughts wandered until she found the end of the sentence. "Well. I didn't want to go back to the way it was, not when I'd seen you get shot, right in front of us. He's my dad Beckett. He's the only parent I have, really. I know I won't legally need one for very much longer, but that's only a technicality. I was afraid. But you make him happy, so, I put that aside."

"That doesn't mean you're okay with it." It's a statement. Alexis prickles next to her.

"No. Part of me isn't. But isn't that normal? Your dad told me something while we were waiting at the hospital, about how he had never stopped worrying about you. So I figure, I don't have to be okay with the fact that my dad is out there, putting himself in danger, to impress a girl." She smiles a little and sneaks a look in Beckett's direction. "Sorry, _to research for a novel_. But I can't stop him from doing it. Besides, it's the perfect analogy to employ the next time I want to do something but he's concerned about _my _safety."

Beckett laughs. "Well I won't warn him if you don't tell him what I've told you. Please. I will, when it's the right time."

"Your secret's safe with me." Alexis stands and walks to the stairs leading down to the wet path. "It's stopped raining. I'd like it if you showed me around a little before we head back."

She nods. "Sure."

They slip and slide down the wet track to the lake, but the rain drops catch the light as they drip off leaves and if it's possible, it's even more beautiful than she remembers it. More than that, walking along the track, chatting easily with Castle's daughter about violin lessons and relationships and colleges, she feels like maybe she's finally done something right, finally taken a step forward.

.

When they get back to the city, it's dark. She parks illegally in front of his building to let Alexis out. The teenager lingers on the curb and leans through the open door. "Thank you Detective Beckett."

"Kate," she corrects. "You can call me Kate."

Alexis nods.

"I ... well, it wasn't exactly _fun_. I mean it was, but more than that, I'm glad we talked."

"Me too."

"We should do it again. And Kate, dad would love it up there, when he's writing."

She waves over her shoulder as she enters the building.

Beckett reaches for her cell before she pulls out of the spot, dials Castle's number. He answers on the first ring.

"Christ Beckett, it's been _hours_."

"I told you we might be a while." She'd anticipated being a few hours earlier though, and cell reception at the cabin wasn't great. "She's on her way up now, safe and sound, like I promised."

"So what did you guys talk about all day?"

She hears him relax and Alexis announcing her presence in the background.

"You Castle." She smirks at how curious it will make him. "What else?"

"Come on Beckett, that's not _fair_."

"I never promised to be _fair_. You'd better go. She'll probably want to tell you all about it."

.

(She gets a text message after she drops of the car at the station. _Your co-conspirator remains infuriatingly silent on the matter_.

She waits until she's at home and curled up in bed to respond, her wet hair curling at her neck. _Guess this one might be a mystery you'll never solve Castle._

Her hand is curled around her cell and she's half-asleep when he responds.

_Give me time._

She yawns, but beneath it, she's smiling.)

* * *

><p>Months later, in the summer, he's late on a deadline and avoiding her when she gets the idea. The keys to the cabin are curled into her palm.<p>

When he opens the door, every cell in her body freezes in anticipation, her tongue itches to move and she doesn't remember to breathe for a very long moment. And everything starts.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes:** So this was _meant_ to be a one shot and then quite a few of you planted _ideas_ about continuing in my head and then _this_ happened. So basically it's all your fault, lovely people who reviewed. This has basically spawned "Beckett's dad's cabin, a history, retrospective and prospective". We'll start here with The Summer Alluded To At The End Of Part One (alternatively titled _the summer of all the gratuitous boning_, please don't judge me) and then there's a few other little stories set over the years, one featuring kiddie Beckett probably.

Now. The rating _really_ had to change for this one, so, erm, kids cover your eyes unless you want to see sexy times. Okay. Good. On with the story.

* * *

><p>Their first summer together in the cabin is like a coma dream; she feels like she's seeing everything in a new light, it's too bright and everything takes on a kind of significance. It's like he wrote them this ending but instead of reading it, she lives it. She'd forgotten it was possible, and she knows the concrete and steel of the city with its crime scenes in the shadows of skyscrapers is waiting, but this, this feels more like reality now.<p>

(He reminds her that she was lighter once, unburdened, that she spent a summer in Europe reading poetry on trains, making notes in the margins.)

It scares her a little bit, how much she understands why they call it falling.

* * *

><p>It began a long time ago, this they both know. The momentum has gathered with the years though, finally, to this moment, which is, paradoxically, slow.<p>

It's after midnight but neither of them realises. The precinct has been dead quiet for hours and his coffee has gone cold. Castle finishes it anyway. He stands, to get more coffee or to go home and to consult Beckett on the decision.

He tugs on the pinch of her sleeve at her elbow. "We've been over it all already," he tells her. "We're not getting anywhere."

"We will," she says, determined; it's in her eyes and the crease between them, a warning to a sensible man, but he has never learned not to poke a sleeping tiger.

"Not tonight," he insists, firm and quiet and gentle.

She sighs, leans her weight against his shoulder and yawns before she can answer, making his point for him.

"Okay," she agrees after a pause. (She's suddenly realised how tired she is.) "Let's go home."

He's at her elbow as they cross the precinct floor, like she might change her mind, like he has to herd her. (In his defence, she does turn and take one last lingering glance at the murder board, but, sighing, she finds nothing new.)

They both reach for the call button to the elevator at the same time, fingers brushing. The ache of exhaustion is loud at her temples, but it still sends a thrill through her. He bumps into her shoulder as he reaches around her hip and she turns, finding him closer than anticipated. There's a heartbeat between breaths; she feels it stutter in her chest before her lungs remember and there's a whisper of air between their lips.

For a moment he thinks she's actually going to kiss him. His eyes slip close as she leans and there's the hover of something conducting between their lips and then, above them, the elevator announces its arrival with a soft ping.

She jerks backwards.

When he opens his eyes she's already in the elevator, holding the doors open, studiously staring at her hands.

.

.

On the sidewalk outside her apartment, the orange glow of the street lamps casts shadows on her face, so he can't see her expression as she asks it, just strains to analyse the soft cadence of each word, invitation and peace-offering: "Walk me up?"

He nearly says no, not out of spite exactly, just to shield himself from further disappointment. Not that he should feel disappointed, he knows that, but it gets harder and harder to go forward as slowly as she leads them. To him, it's beginning to feel a lot like standing still.

But he's never really been any good at denying her anything. "Sure."

They're quiet in the elevator. It's not quite the same quiet as it was at the 12th, but there's an echo of it. She jams the button two times more than is necessary.

At her door, she pauses, falling against the wood. He's waiting for her cue.

"I'm sorry," she says, finally, turning to face him, leaning into the wall.

"No – Beckett," he pauses, sighing, finding words ineffectual. "You don't have to be."

(Because she did say, nearly a year ago now, that there was a timeline to be observed, asked him to wait, in that way she has of not asking anything at all. And besides, he knows she doesn't _owe_ him anything.)

"I am though." She reaches out and lets her fingers close around his wrist, smoothing over skin and bone and invisible wound. "I don't know. It's late. We're tired."

They're all excuses and they sound like it too. She curses, tries to conjure up better reasons and fails miserably. Maybe she should just lay one on him and be done with it, invite him in, leave him with fewer doubts about the kind of relationship she wants. Her tongue moistens her lips at the thought, but her heart's not really in it, not the way she wants it to be. (Every limb is exhausted and part of her mind is still distracted by the case.)

Her fingers slip through his and she tugs him closer, bringing one arm up behind his shoulder and letting her head rest against it. "Castle I– "

"Don't." His chin bumps against her head and he pulls her weight from against the wall, hugging her to him. "I know."

Relief and exhaustion spread through her in equal measure, and the comfort of the circles he's tracing at her back coaxes her tired mind towards stilling. Yawning, she relaxes against him. "I should go to bed before I fall asleep on my feet," she murmurs.

He laughs. "And you didn't want to leave."

"I just know there's something we're missing," she mumbles, drowsily.

"And tomorrow, or well, later today, I'm sure you'll find it."

They stand there for another few minutes though, and she presses her lips against his shoulder just barely before she steps backward and they say goodnight.

.

.

But the next day, something has shifted. She can't quite put her finger on it, because he brings her coffee and he smiles at her like he usually does but something isn't the same. She feels it in the raised hairs on her arms as they pour over their evidence.

It hits them both at the same time. They turn and exclaim the murderers name and she shakes of the feeling that's been prickling at her skin all day, because everything is normal, just as it was.

Until he begs off after the suspect is in cuffs, says he has a deadline approaching and hasn't made enough progress on the next novel. She swallows it down after as she watches him leave, turns back to her paperwork and forces herself to ignore it.

(After all, this is what they do: writer, detective, always, almost.)

.

.

Two weeks later, she breathes out her greeting when he opens the door, as though she's surprised to see him there, "Hi."

He stares for a long moment. It's a habit that's worsening. It's magnetism or homing instinct. He can find her in a crowded room in seconds. The empty hallway poses less of a challenge, but he's taking all of her in for the longest moment until he remembers himself. "Beckett." He falters, steps aside and lets gestures take over from struggling words.

"You've been avoiding me," she says, as she crosses the threshold, keys curled sharply into the flesh of her palm, elbows crossed over her ribs, protecting all that lies beneath.

He opens his mouth to protest but manages only a half-hearted huff of air. "No," he says, a moment too late.

She turns and he notices her toes moving in her unusually sensible shoes. He used to think she was never nervous. Kate Beckett has always seemed precise, exacting, undemonstrative unless she wants to be, but he knows now, _knows_ her despite her protests. And the shift of her toes and the smile that doesn't reach her eyes are her tell.

(Her eyes always are. He has learned this amongst many other things.)

"I've been writing."

She narrows her eyes, the detective in her roused. "You're always writing. And usually, with a deadline looming, you'd be sniffing around the precinct finding any excuse to procrastinate. No," she says, decidedly. "You've been avoiding me."

Maybe he has. Maybe the incident in the middle of the night awakened some kind of _need _that he's been meaning to get a hold on for days now. Maybe he's realised how little success he's had when he sees her. He's trying to find a way to skirt the subject when she interrupts his thoughts with a rush of words and air.

"Come away with me, for the weekend," she says.

_That_ he was not expecting. As he gapes in shocked silence she frowns.

"It doesn't have to be a big... _thing_, I just know this place, where it's quiet, and I know you like quiet when you're writing. So come, just for a few days. And if you like it, you can stay."

She pauses for a moment, and he sees it, sees that she actually thinks there's a possibility that he'd refuse her. The idea is ridiculous. He shakes his head at it, but immediately regrets the gesture when her eyes widen.

(Only just barely, only to someone who's spent too much time cataloguing the little details of her).

"Of course if you _can't_ then it's fine," she backpedals.

Castle reaches out and curls his fingers around her wrist when he sees her on the verge of retreat.

"Beckett." He looks at her and waits, watches her until he sees that she sees. (The _yes_ that has always been there.) "I can."

"I know it's late notice," she says.

(It is, after all, Friday morning. And, as he holds her wrist up to look at her watch to note the time, he realises she should probably be at work by now.)

She follows his eyes.

"What will Gates say?" His mouth twitches. The Captain has softened, slightly, toward all of them, in her year at the 12th, but she still runs a tight ship.

"Nothing." Beckett kind of _twinkles_ up at him, and he's fairly certain he's never seen her do it in quite the same way before. "I took the day off."

"You _what_?"

"Well. If you said yes, I wanted to beat the traffic."

"And if I didn't?"

She arches an eyebrow. "I knew you'd say yes." And then she pushes past him into the kitchen, nose catching a whiff of dark roasted espresso, which she decides she absolutely _must_ investigate. (There aren't many things about him she has _always_ appreciated, but his taste in coffee is definitely one.)

He crowds her at the machine though, ostensibly under the guise of assisting, and says it next to her ear. "No you didn't. But you should've."

Damn him for reading her too well. She bumps his forearm with her hip and escapes to the other side of the counter. "Will your mother be here? For Alexis?" she calls, over the noise of the espresso machine.

He sets the cup down in front of her. "Alexis and her friends are up at the Hamptons house this week." He looks pained for a second. "Doing god knows what to celebrate the end of senior year. I'm pretending it's like the sleepover she had for her 10th birthday party and that all they're doing is watching movies and braiding each other's hair."

"You were always the one pushing her to be more adventurous." Beckett hides her smile with her mug.

"Only when I was pretty sure she wouldn't take me up on it." He's half-joking though.

Still, she offers reassurance. "Alexis is sensible. I'm sure you have nothing to worry about."

Castle nods and reaches out and takes her coffee when she sets it down on the counter, steals a mouthful. All the while she watches him with an arched eyebrow.

He raises one hand defensively. "I've had far too much already. I only took a _sip_."

She presses her lips together, clearly communicating her distaste.

"So where are we going?" he asks, keen to distract her in case of impending doom.

"My dad's cabin," she says simply, staring down at her thumb where it traces the lip of the mug.

"Where you spent last summer?" he murmurs.

She pauses when she shouldn't, hesitates on a breath. "Yeah," she says, finally. "I think you'll like it there."

"Well," he mulls over it for a second. "You'll be there."

Her heart hammers in her chest at that.

.

.

The freeway is blissfully uncrowded. She lets her foot rest heavily on the accelerator because she's always enjoyed driving too fast. He leans across to check their speed when she overtakes someone going the posted speed limit in front of them.

She takes one hand off the wheel to push him back into the passenger side. "Oh no, you are not about to start back seat driving on me. Relax, we do this all the time on the way to crime scenes, you're just too hopped up on adrenaline to notice."

"Beckett, somehow I doubt you push seventy five miles per hour on city streets."

Well, he might have a point there.

"Thought you'd like this version of me Castle." She steals the briefest glance but makes it count, hums at the rest brazenly. "Relaxed about the rules, maybe a little bit wild."

She can see him gaping at her in her peripheral vision.

Smirking, she toys with the idea of reaching across and pulling his hand into her lap. But she has to concentrate on the road and she'd miss his face, which would be half of the point. The other half, well, she likes the idea of fingers running along the seam of her jeans. She bites down on her smirking mouth.)

"Wild huh?"

"Maybe," she says, tone neutral.

"Hmm." He ponders over it and turns his attention to the blur beside the road, all white lines and exit signs.

It's moments like this that she understands Kerouac and Steinbeck. The highway stretches before her like endless possibility, clear and met at the horizon by sky, cloudless, blue. It's freedom and abandon and hurtling towards the future at eighty miles an hour. Change is coming, and for once she's running to meet it.

.

.

He watches as she stretches her limbs, arms over her head tugging at her shirt revealing a hint of stomach, neck rolling side to side. A small moan of pleasure escapes her at the crack of her spine. Oh, if he could capture the sound.

She opens her eyes and finds him looking at her. Caught, he opens his mouth to explain but she just shakes her head. "Come on."

Suddenly, she's impatient, arms burdened by the heavy weight of groceries and luggage. She's been all nerves all morning, and she knows that he's noticed. As she wrestles with the door, knee bracing one of the environmentally friendly bags full of food, she takes a deep, halting breath, reminds herself of their slow evolution, the perpetual forward motion. He pauses at her shoulder.

"You okay?" He puts down his load and relieves her of part of hers.

She nods. "Fine."

Castle can never resist the urge to poke his head through an open doorway. She lets him inspect the place while she unpacks the groceries, focussing on the perishables. There's at least another bag in the car, priorities.

Just when she's wondering where he's disappeared to he knocks at the back door, startles her. Her hand flies to her chest over her scar.

"You're right," he says after she unlocks the door to let him in. "I like it here."

"Come on," she admonishes. "You _could_ do your share of the heavy lifting."

(He doesn't miss her quiet smile though.)

.

.

They don't quite make it to the last of the bags. It happens something like this: they both try to use the doorway at once and bump shoulders and when they each turn to apologise she realises just how close she is to his mouth. So she fists her hands in his shirt and presses him back into the doorframe and raises herself to kiss him.

(Of course, because he's Castle, he interrupts her halfway.)

"Beckett, what ..."

She's torn somewhere between a roll of her eyes and a smile. "I'm trying to kiss you Castle."

He blinks. "You're full of surprises today."

"Oh." She looks up at him from beneath her eyelashes. "You don't know the half of it."

He decides he'd probably better let her kiss him.

They were good at it the first time, but they're better at it the second. He thumbs along the arc of her cheek, fingers curling behind her ear and she winds a hand around his neck, lets it carry her weight until gravity catches her hair.

(It's a literary moment, one of many.)

She reaches out and takes his hand, knots their fingers, pulls them up between their chests as he presses the other between her shoulders, a gentle weight that holds her close. She breathes against his neck, head bowed.

"Still amazing?" she asks.

His lips catch the crown of her head when he nods.

.

.

The mattress is bare at her knees as they stumble into it. She kicks aside her jeans and his, moving to clamber over him but he stops her, palms flat against her hips. Eyebrow quirked, she looks down and sees the question. She glimpses the ceiling in familiar and mostly feigned exasperation. "Yes," she says, bending until they're nose-to-nose. "I'm sure."

He sees the moment it occurs to her that their roles in that could be reversed. It starts as the faintest crinkle between her eyes and spreads until she looks more serious. "Are you?"

Castle's still not entirely sure he trusts himself to speak, so he nods, curls his fingers against the slip of skin between sensible black satin and the hem of her shirt. Her hands rest against his shoulders, gentle pressure a suggestion that he ignores, ducking beneath her chin and pressing lips to skin revealed by each button he twists open with his fingers. The breath shudders out of her.

Their eyes meet when she shucks the shirt from her shoulders, his mouth still tasting her stomach. He curls forward so his forehead rests against her skin and blows lightly against the wet trail left by his mouth until she shivers.

"Castle." It approximates the stern tone he's used to, but there's a little too much air behind the vowel.

"Mmm?" He's tonguing the bone of her hip now, fingers hooked into her underwear, toying with the idea.

She steps backward, curls her hands around his and holds them clear of her body.

Palming along the shoulder of his shirt, she tries for banter. "This is going to need to come off," she manages, but then his hands have spanned the curve of her back again and they're both looking a little too stunned to manage witty conversation. He nods mutely and gets in the way _entirely_ when he nudges forward and swipes his tongue beneath the top of her underwear.

She pushes him back and glares but he only looks halfway contrite. (Most of him just looks _proud_.)

Her hands are shaking slightly when she reaches to unbutton his shirt, a mixture of _want_ and _need_ and _nerves_ and the inevitable. (She's never wanted to believe in fate, there's always been something so scary about it.) Beckett loses her patience with buttons and with _what ifs_. She tugs and the first button clatters across the floor. He's about to comment but she pulls the shirt over his head so sharply it shuts him up. Palming into his shoulder more insistently, she leans down, kisses him with measured intensity, fierce and exacting, at least until they fall.

Her forehead bumps his a little too sharply when they meet the mattress, feet still hanging over the edge.

The fear – that things might shift too dramatically, that it might not live up to expectations on one side or the other – is abandoned completely when she laughs and he laughs with her. It's simple. She mutes his amusement with her mouth, pressed to his, laughter turning into audible breathing.

Castle's hands skirt her ribs when they break for air. She's studying his face as he watches the path of his hand, her head propped in her palm, an elbow curled beneath it.

He shuffles closer, reaches around to her back to negotiate the clasp of her bra. She twists to assist, lets him slide it down her arms before she takes it and throws it across the room.

"What?" she asks, finally, too curious.

"Nothing," he says, eyes in line with her scars. "Everything. You."

"Yeah?"

He smooths over the mark the bullet left with his tongue and says it to her skin, "Of course."

She has a response ready, somewhere, but she forgets it entirely when the warmth of his mouth closes around a nipple, fingers lightly slipping from her waist to her hip, making the journey over and over.

It draws a groan from her mouth. He hums in appreciation at the sound and that has her body twisting to find more of his. Reaching down, she presses her hand to the junction of his jaw and his body, urging him up. His mouth traces a hot line from the scar at her sternum to the curve of her neck, far too slowly. Her impatience is fading though, lost entirely when his teeth scrape against her jumping pulse. The air catches in a whimper as it escapes her chest.

"I thought we'd talk more," he tells her neck.

"You mean before?"

"No. I mean, I had this crazy idea that I'd be able to think of a single intelligent thing to say after you took off your pants."

"Oh I wouldn't worry," she hums, sounding like honey. "I think we've discovered better things for you to do with your tongue."

"Just think, all those years you were trying to shut me up and all it would've – "

She demonstrates his point rather neatly by pulling him to her mouth by his hair.

When his hands run down her body she groans against his tongue, leaning into the touch, sliding one of her knees between his thighs, but he pauses, thumbs tracing the skin bared above her underwear. At first she thinks it's just to infuriate her, because teasing has always been a part of the game, but it lasts too long not to ask. "Castle?"

He noses against her hair, splayed beneath his cheek on the mattress. "I know what you said but– "

The finger pressed against his lips silences him. She twists and tugs at fabric until she's properly undressed. Taking his hand, she brushes his fingers along the inside of her thigh. When she leans up to whisper it, it's a huff of warm air in his ear and the skitter of electricity along his spine.

"Don't ask me again if I want this." Her teeth sink into the lobe and she brings their hands to rest between her legs. His fingers slip against flesh, wet with want and it sends her mouth falling open, releasing his ear. "You can tell how much I do."

He doesn't say anything, just sucks her finger into his mouth and slides his tongue along the tip.

Pressing her nose into his cheek she gasps as his exploring fingers find their mark. The pressure is suddenly slow and deliberate and _not enough_. Her hips urge towards his hand.

And here they are, something in her still disbelieving. It's been defying her logic for years. What are the chances, she thinks, Richard Castle, her one and done.

Because she is, figuratively and literally – she yelps and her body jerks and it hits all of her in different ways. It's almost burning between her legs (almost too much, almost pain and only just barely enough) and her legs shake with it , hips erratic like breath, expanding lungs and a mind that says exactly what she thinks which is nothing, except a quiet _oh_ and _Castle, Castle_ into his skin, her teeth on his shoulder, her chest ever growing, more air, more him, more. It's lightness, warmth, love, right there beneath her healed sternum like it's going to escape her all at once. This. This is new. Sex and even love have happened before but they're an echo of this, in her past, like she always knew this was coming.

She smiles at him, lazy, stretching out her limbs and opens her eyes.

He's running his hands along the inside of her thigh, curls his hands around her hip.

Twisting her toes against the unmade bed, body lax, she feels the hum of it – heart in her chest, muscles twitching everywhere below her waist, mind turning it over and over slowly.

He looks at her and a wellspring of things pass his eyes, she sees each one: love, desire, _hope_.

He presses his face into her neck, fingers at hip pushing her backwards, like each one is saying _Beckett, Beckett, let me in_.

She does. (And that's only part euphemism. She always thought it was cheating, in novels: the feel of him inside of her, but there he is, in every cell of her, every microscopic particle and the spaces in between.)

The grind of hips and his hand between their chests, fingers digging into ribs, thumb pressing insistently on her nipple, all of it, makes her gasp, sigh, meet his eye, grin a little. He answers it with one of his own.

By her heels, she moves her legs up his back until they're wrapped above his hips. His hands are suddenly at her thighs, tracing skin far too lightly, out of place in this moment, hot and heavy. It makes her hips press into his more insistently.

She needs something to do with her hands, so she reaches out for his face, tugs his head to hers, splays her fingers along her cheek.

The fingers at her hip try to find purchase between them but there's no space. He pulls back, pushes her thighs against the mattress and the stretch burns through her, sends her back arcing, grinding into his thumb where it's slick between her legs. His fingers rest on her stomach. The rhythm of it is relentless and he feels her stomach tighten as she shifts, raising herself on her elbows and hooking her feet behind his knees for leverage.

She's watching him and he can't read her expression. It's... curiosity and wonder in equal parts. He's always wanted more of her than he can have, still does: even this tangle of limbs and press of hips and tense of her around him when she moves, her stomach tensing beneath his hands, it's not enough.

It feels good (yes, criminally good, insert obvious pun here) but more, something has finally shifted to its right place: him above her, her below him, vice versa. This is how he always knew it was meant to be.

Beckett groans and flexes her ankles as his thumb traces a circle and its electricity through her but she knows that's all it will be. There's not another orgasm in her, like her body's still pleasantly exhausted from the first one. She tugs at his wrists.

"What– "

He starts the question but she shakes her head, once, smiles.

"Come here."

He does.

With her hands bracing his cheeks, she pulls her mouth to his and maps his tongue, cartographical precision. He breathes her name into her lip, her real name, a soft _Kate_.

_Yes_, she thinks, _it's me_. The fact that it's her, doing this, to him, it makes something ache through her, arousal and gratitude and blood. She speaks into his neck, lips brushing stubble, teeth grazing the throbbing pulse she finds there.

"It's you," she says, smoothing the path of her words with her tongue. "Castle, it's you."

At that he collapses, sighing into her shoulder, hips moving slower, once, twice and then he's completely still. When he finds breath his mouth brushes the shell of her ear. "That, _you_, was, _are_, amazing, extraordinary. Indescribable."

"Do you need me to buy you a thesaurus?"

(She smiles a small, wondering smile as she says it though.)

He pulls back to look at her, bumps his nose against hers and kisses her, softly, instead of coming up with a retort. (And, she thinks, she could get used to that.)

When he moves to roll away though, she stops him, fingers gripping his shoulder. "Don't," she says, "Stay here."

She shifts them both together, so they're on their sides, facing each other and runs a hand through his hair.

"So this was your plan?" he murmurs. "To screw my brains out until I stopped avoiding you?"

She smirks. "Are you saying it was ineffective?"

"No, no. Good plan."

She extracts herself, her limbs from his, and feels the evidence of him, her, them, together, like this, sticky against her thighs. They smell like sex – it's on his fingers, between her legs.

(Everything where it should be.)

"Castle I– " she pauses, hand halting against his cheek.

He flexes his fingers against her waist where they've been distracted, blazing trails against her skin because he's suddenly been given permission, like he always wanted to. He always knew they'd be great.

(They are. But she was right too; he had no idea.)

He smiles. "Kate, I know."

She nods and folds into his shoulder, breathing. "I do too," she says.

.

.

(Later, as they watch the sunset over the lake he says, "So, I see only one problem with staying up here for the summer to write."

"Oh?" she hums, lets her elbow nudge into his ribs. "You know we solved murders just _fine_ before you came along."

He smirks. "Yes. But now it's more _fun_."

The echo of Montgomery's words doesn't sting like it once might've. It's been a year; she's starting to realise that wounds and the mark they leave say more about what you've survived than what you've lost.

"But that's not my issue," he continues, drawing her from her thoughts before she has a chance for true introspection. "The problem is, if I'm up here, where will you be?"

"I imagine," she says, "That I'll see you on weekends."

"Every weekend?" he asks.

"Well, you might have to share me with a murder once in a while."

"Hmm," he ponders over it. "Deal.")

* * *

><p>It's a long drive on a Friday night. By the time she arrives she's tense and a little hoarse from expressing her dissatisfaction with the motorists ahead of her out loud and in the choicest terms possible. (It's a habit she only indulges when she's alone.) It's nine o'clock by the time she makes it to the door. The clacking of keys greets her from the dark room beyond.<p>

He's surrounded by handwritten notes torn from yellow legal pads (and he's probably shredded through at least _ten_ by her appraisal), staring at the screen with determination, face illuminated by its blue-white glow.

Beckett kicks off her shoes and turns the light on to announce her presence.

He blinks up at her in distaste. "My eyes."

"You'll live." She nudges at his calf with her foot. "Move the ones you don't want me to sit on."

He tugs at her wrist until she slumps beside him without moving a thing. The paper crunches beneath her.

"How–"

"Don't finish that sentence," she groans, tugs his arm around her shoulders and falls against his side, pressing her face into the sleeve of his shirt and closing her eyes. "The drive was awful, the case was worse, I left Ryan and Esposito with the paperwork so they probably hate me right now, and I..." she trails off, but when she unveils her face he's looking at her, expectant.

"Yes?"

She narrows her eyes at how amused he looks. "I'm starving," she says, but they both know it's not what she was going to say.

"And?"

"You're brave you know," she mutters, as the hand on her arms slips to span the curve of her side, fingers brushing. "Testing my patience right now."

"Mmm," he hums into her temple, "I figure you'd miss me too much at this point to actually kill me. That's what you were about to say wasn't it?"

"There's always maiming Castle."

"Yes," he murmurs, reaching across to tip her chin. "Time for that later though."

It's a thrilling combination of new and already-familiar, the gentle pressure of his mouth and the insistent swipe of her tongue. Her teeth catch her lower lip as she pulls back, her body suddenly awake, distracted from the heaviness of the day. She sets his laptop down on the floor with one arm and braces the other against the inside of his shoulder, pushing him backwards, falling with him. He reaches out to grab at her hip, holding her upright.

"You did miss me," he says, infuriatingly, when she rights herself, shifts her knees to straddle his thigh.

"Certain parts of you more than others," she counters, sporting, bending to press her lips to the corner of his mouth.

"Oh?"

"Do you want me to explicate further?" she drawls out beside his ears, vowels long and consonants hard.

He manages to wedge his fingers beneath the waistband of her jeans. His thumbs slip downward beneath the lace of her underwear. "I think you know the answer to that."

"Does it have something to do with my vocabulary turning you on?"

Finding himself eyelevel with her chest he nods, mouth finding skin. "Oh yes. Amongst other things."

The front button of her jeans is suddenly undone and his hands have wandered, one pressing insistently at the back of her thigh and the other tracing circles, trapping lace beneath his fingers.

She looks up, shifts her legs further apart to facilitate better access and gives him a look. "One day, I'll figure out how you do it."

"Really?" He's smirking far too much as he thumbs against her, eliciting a small gasp and closed eyes.

Her revenge is exacted swiftly as she smiles far too sweetly to be anything but wicked. She pulls her shirt over her head and unclasps her bra. They both land somewhere in the mess of notes and forgotten cups of coffee. His trapped hands itch to touch newly exposed skin, but she does it for him, slides her palms up her stomach, cups her breasts and groans rather pornographically.

And then she shifts so her knees are at his hips and her weight is an inch from settling over them each time she rocks against his hand.

Bending so her mouth hovers over his ear she lets her chest press against his and runs her hands over his shoulders. "Do you want to know what I missed the _most_?"

He nods and somehow (she really will never figure it out, despite her contrary assertions) his thumb flicks against her in a way she didn't even _know_ she wanted until she's feeling it in her knees and shaking thighs and the fact that she can't move or think or do anything except let her forehead fall against the armrest beside his head and drag her teeth over his shoulder. His fingers never stop, they keep plying more from her even when she thinks they won't.

She swears quietly when they still, but he lets them rest, feeling each twitch of her body.

"You were saying?"

Before she even _moves_, she can tell that he's smirking.

Pulling his hand from between her legs, she shifts, righting herself and letting her hips roll against his. (That shuts him up for a second.) He'd hard beneath her and it sends an echo through her. She indulging the thought of sex, hard and fast and on the floor, when her stomach growls.

"The way I feed you regularly?" he speculates.

"What?"

"What you missed the most. Regular meals."

She twists a hand in her slightly dishevelled hair. "Mmm, I suppose." Her fingernails trace the length of his chest. "I'm sure there were other things."

"Food first." He sits up into her, hugs her against him and kisses her shoulder. "I missed you too," he says, quietly.

She nods so he knows she's heard, but shakes off the moment, bends and whispers it in his ear. "I'm going to pay you back _so hard_ for that."

"Ooh." He wiggles his eyebrows at her. "The maiming you promised."

She kisses him thoroughly and bites down on his lip. "Oh yeah."

"Well, the dining room table is as much of a mess as in here, so I suppose we'll have to eat in bed."

She quirks an eyebrow, amused. "You do, do you?"

"Nothing for it," he assures her. "And since your shirt's lost to the deep dark recesses of my novel plotting and these jeans are half off anyway, I'd say we might just have to eat without _them_ as well."

"However will we cope?"

"Oh." He noses into her collarbone. "I'm sure we'll manage."

They do.

.

.

She bites into a peach from below the Mason-Dixie line and her hand flies out to catch the surprise of juice sliding down her fingers, down to her wrists. She smiles, as though life has chosen this moment to remind her of its simple joys, and lets her thumb catch along her chin. It's a private moment, and she feels the intrusion but welcomes it, gaze flicking up to find his waiting (just where she knew it would be).

"You're supposed to be working," she accuses, lightly as he crosses the worn linoleum of the kitchen.

(It's the original, a relic, but she likes it; it reminds her of the threads of time, past and present, that they share spaces with those who occupied them _before_. She can imagine that when it was new, another couple kissed in this kitchen, wondering if Kennedy and Khrushchev would end the world.)

He reaches out and thumbs along her lip, smudging peach juice at the corners of her mouth. "I can work all week. You're only here until tomorrow."

"If I'm distracting you, I can leave earlier," she teases.

The pressure of his thumb increases as he maps the bone of her cheek. "Maybe I just need some time with my muse." (His fingers slip against her neck, flaring to find her hair and grasping at the curls, gently.) "You know," he breathes over her lips. "For inspiration."

It crawls along her spine lazily, but there'll be time for that. She holds out the peach, and he takes a bite, and still, more juice springs from the flesh. So much, she thinks, for such a small thing. His tongue darts out to collect the excess.

Stepping backwards, stretching his arm out between them, Beckett quirks an eyebrow as he chews. "You've already been _inspired_, twice."

His free hand curls around her wrist, sticky with fruit. "It's not enough," he says, honestly. "Beckett, it never will be."

He tugs at her arm; she lets him pull her against him, the skirt of her dress glancing the backs of her knees. They pause then, her face against his shoulder, one of his hands in her hair, stickying it with juice.

It's just a moment though. They breathe, it shifts.

He's nudging her to angle her jaw insistently with his thumb and she moves, lets him kiss her, sweet with peach and hot with summer. They stumble backward. His tongue shifts against the hiss of her breath as it rushes out of her, hips jutting against the solid weight of the counter. She twists, tangles one hand in his shirt for leverage, bites into her lip.

Castle's hands slip, with false idleness, down her neck to the straps of her dress where they've fallen against the curve of her shoulders. He kisses the scar that rests between her clavicles, an imperfection that used to glare at her in the mirror until she accepted it for what it was, what he sees it as: a testament to how she lived when she might have died. She brings him to his neck, hugs him against her.

"You know," she says, casually. He glances up at her. "I'm beginning to think this _muse_ business is just a ploy to get sex."

He smirks, tongues the dip above her clavicle and speaks to her skin. "Is that a complaint?"

The laugh reverberates through her chest and he feels the shake of it.

She reaches up and meets his hands, pushing aside his ineffectual fingers and sliding down the straps of her dress with a shrug of each shoulder in turn.

"What do you think?"

_Oh, so many things_.

He braces her hips with his hands, fingers splaying, holding her against him. And then bends, tucks his head beneath her skirt and tongues along her thigh. Her feet crawl down his back.

.

.

(It's not just sex though.

It's her wet hair splayed against her chest and the sting of splinters sinking into his feet as they lie, stealing oxygen from the humid night air, on the wood of the dock by the lake, debating who pushed who in.

"_You_ pulled me in after you," he says.

And she says, "Only because you _pushed_ me."

They leave it at that, and stare up at the stars and the space between them, darkness and old light. She feels the weight of that beauty, that she and him and everything between them is a small part of something bigger. They are their own thread in time.)

* * *

><p>She frowns at him on Friday in the fading purple of the day, their shadows dark in the hall.<p>

"You were meant to invite Alexis and your mother up here this weekend."

"Maybe I want you all to myself."

"Maybe I promised Alexis that she could come and stay with us."

"Really?"

"I don't want her to think I've stolen you."

"Sophie's choice Beckett."

She smiles. "Lucky for you, I pick up your slack. They're in the car."

He actually pouts. "You went behind my back to avoid _alone time_?"

"Castle. There'll be alone time."

He smirks. "Be warned. My mother will tease."

In the doorway she pulls him by the shirt into a kiss. "Let her," she whispers over his mouth.

He nearly tells her he loves her right then and there, but his daughter is bounding up the stairs and hugging both of them at the same time so he's distracted with it on his tongue. He looks at her over Alexis' head though, and her eyes are shining with what he imagines is everything he feels.

Alexis pulls back, grins at Beckett who moves to help Martha with one of two suitcases (of course). She takes her father by the elbow and scolds. "Jeez dad, you could answer my calls."

"When have I _ever_ missed a call?" He bends down and kisses the top of her head. "Now, tell me everything that I _have_ missed."

They chat animatedly on the back porch, the hum and enthusiasm of their conversation audible throughout the rest of the cabin.

Martha catches Beckett watching them through the kitchen window.

"What are you thinking my dear?" Castle's mother nudges her shoulder gently.

Beckett shakes her head, smiling mutely. "I don't know Martha. He's good with her, good with me, _good_."

"He is." Martha lets an arm rest on Beckett's shoulder, and normally she'd feel crowded, but Castle's mother has always made her feel comfortable, easy, part of the family. "As much as he sometimes tries to hide it."

"Sometimes I can't believe that I didn't always see it."

Martha smiles knowingly beside her.

.

.

Alexis joins her on the back porch after her exile from the kitchen. Martha was firm, _you can help by drinking that glass of wine_. She was enjoying the moment alone, watching the sinking sun and the moon chasing it from the sky, but she finds she doesn't mind Castle's daughter leaning against the railing next to her, sighing in appreciation of the view.

"How are you Kate?" she asks in a low voice.

"Good," she answers honestly. "Really... good." Because she is. Happy, something inside her at rest even momentarily, like for the first time in a long time she sees an endpoint for all the damage, the havoc the last two years have wreaked.

Alexis leans against her arm, lightly. "Good."

"How were the Hamptons?"

"Fun," Alexis sighs. "Really fun."

Beckett smiles. "It's exciting, the summer between high school and college. And a little bit sad."

"Yes!" Alexis looks up at her, exclaims with a quiet excitement that reminds Beckett of her heritage. "That's exactly it. It feels a little premature to be nostalgic and yet, even the smallest things remind me that it's really over, this thing I've been working towards my whole life."

"Your dad mentioned that you were deciding between Berkeley and Northwestern."

"I've been thinking about medical school at UCSF," Alexis says. "Northwestern is a better school but Berkeley is in California, and they give preference to California residents..." she trails off, "I have this habit of getting ahead of myself.

"It's always good to have a plan. And I can see you as a doctor." Beckett pauses, thinks it over. "They're both good schools. The only downside that I can see is that neither of them are on the East Coast."

Alexis gives her a sly smile. "Downside?"

"Your father will be _devastated_."

"Well then." The smile gets even slyer. "Lucky he has you around to _console_ him."

"Are you sure about that?"

Alexis looks up, sensing the serious question behind the teasing one.

"I mean, it must be... strange, different. I can't imagine my dad dating anybody."

"You think he does?"

"Oh god, I don't know. Part of me kind of _hopes_ he does. It's been a long time Alexis. I don't want him to be lonely. But at the same time, it'd be hard, seeing him with someone else, someone who wasn't my mother."

"Well I know my situation is very different and my family has never really been _nuclear_, but as someone with a little more practice, it gets easier."

"Really? No second thoughts? You still approve?"

"Kate, I'm really glad he has you," Alexis says, earnestly. "I'm glad we all do."

She's looking out at the sunset as she says it, cautiously. Beckett lets her hand rest against her shoulder for a moment. "Me too."

Alexis looks up at her and smiles, her hair flame red and gold against the back drop of the sky.

.

.

At the end of July he sends the final draft to Gina and they spend the last weekend pouring over a case she closed on Friday but can't quite put to rest. By Sunday afternoon they're still coming up short, and the cop in her is itching to get back to the city, back to the precinct, back to work. Part of it is _him_ though, because for the first time in months he's coming with her. The feeling is a conflicting mix of thrilled and apprehensive. She needs to know that the dynamic will be the same, that he'll still bring her coffee and pretend he's not falling asleep as they pour over paper trails and the murder board late at night.

(That _so much_ and _nothing_ has changed.)

She sits on the back porch, feeling reflective, while he negotiates the _mess_ that is the aftermath of writing a novel. (At least, the way he does it, which is no surprise at all.)

His weight settling beside her pulls her from those thoughts.

"Done already?" She raises an eyebrow, clearly disbelieving.

"Well, I threw most of it straight out. But no, it's time for a break."

"Mmm, you were at it for all of twenty minutes."

"My work to break ratio is usually quite high when it comes to the _writer_ half of my job."

"The _writer _half? And what is this _other_ half?"

"Loyal shadow to a hot NYPD detective. I keep her in coffee." He makes a show of looking behind her. "You might know her?"

She elbows into his side. "Sure. I think I've seen her around."

"So I've been thinking about that," he starts then falters.

"Thinking about what?" she prompts.

"About a certain hot NYPD detective. And the new terms that might have to be negotiated in that partnership."

"Mmm." She nods, still smiling, but the humour fades slightly. "What exactly did you have in mind? Because sex in the squad car is _definitely_ off the cards, at least, during working hours."

"Stop distracting me." He frowns. "But we're definitely revisiting the qualifier on that statement later."

She sighs. "I know what you're asking Castle. I've been thinking the same thing."

"You asked a long time ago what we were," he says all-too-seriously, "So now it's my turn. Whatever you want, but you have to tell me."

It twists at her chest for a moment, because he's looking at her and she sees all of it, everything that has always been there, and the slightest bit of _fear_. She wishes, more than anything, that she didn't inspire that, that it was there without reason. But they've spent too many summers at arm's length for her to really believe she's blameless.

She pushes at his shoulder until she can fall against his chest, rests her chin on her palms. "Castle. You sound like you think there's even the slightest possibility that I wouldn't want to keep doing this." She clambers onto her knees, sinks down into his lap, kisses him until he's half forgotten the conversation at hand.

When he's breathing heavily beneath her, hands splaying her ribs and thumbs flicking across the swell of her chest, she lets her mouth trail along his cheek and huffs it in his ear. "After we go back, I imagine it'll be much the same as it was. Only now, we'll do this."

He slides his hands down her body and lets one trace patterns against the inside of her thigh beneath her hitching skirt. "Kate. That's not quite an answer."

She bites into her lip and retreats to her end of the porch swing, kicking off the wood so they rock back and forth gently. She's staring at her feet. "But it is. What do you want me to say? That I don't want to go back to the way things were? That I... I haven't let myself want a future with anyone in longer than I'd like to admit to my therapist, but with you..."

She trails off. "It's you Castle. It feels like it always has been. Why would you doubt that?"

"Most of me doesn't," he says quietly, reaching out to turn her head, thumbing along the line of her jaw. "Not for a second. But if it's true, it shouldn't be hard for you to say, unless you have your own doubts."

She braces herself on her elbows and shuffles closer to hide her face in his shoulder. "What if I do?"

"Then you're human." He kisses her temple. "Fallible. Don't doubt it. I've loved you for years Kate Beckett. Couldn't stop now."

"Will you remind me when I do?" she asks, quietly. "Doubt it, I mean. Some days I'm sure I'll need convincing."

He laughs; she feels his chest move with it. "Every day. I promise you. You'll get sick of hearing it."

She pulls back and gives him a displeased look at his mirth. But it softens soon enough and she bends, presses her lips to his lightly. "No," she says, "I don't think I will."

.

.

Later, when he's packed up all the things they've collected over the summer and loaded the car, he finds her on the back porch, staring out over the sun dipping into the horizon. It's blinding, orange in the sky and brilliant white when it catches the water.

"What are you thinking?" he murmurs in her ear.

She starts, but reaches behind her and pulls his arm around her middle until he steps forward and leans his chin on her shoulder, lips pressing against her ear.

"I'm not sure," she admits.

"Nothing will change," he reads her easily. "Nothing has, not for me."

She nods once, and says it half to the sunset, half to him. "You know, I love you, more than I thought I did when we came up here."

"I think I've known for a long time."

She turns her head over her shoulder, stares at him. "Good," she says, resolute.

_Yes_, he thinks, _it is_.


End file.
